It’s an easy, brisk afternoon here in the ROK. Overcast. I
think it’s supposed to snow today.
I’m posted up on the couch in front of my big, street-facing
window with two fingers of whiskey and my pipe. It’s Saturday. Life is good.
I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for a good while, and
to my folks back home, I apologize. The reasons have been twofold.
1. It's been busy. Productive, but very busy.
After about 15 days of heavy studying, I
took the GRE. That was big. I did about as expected, that is, good on the
verbal section and not so good on the quantitative reasoning section. That’s
allowed me to apply to graduate schools, which I’ve finished as well.
I applied to six MA in English programs.
Many of those are in North Carolina. I’d be excited to go to any of them, so it
really just comes down to where I (hopefully) get funding. If you’ve ever
applied to graduate schools, you know it’s a lot of doing and redoing. I’m glad
to be done with it, and I should (hopefully) know most of the admissions
decisions by late March – so that’s exciting.
I also have been workshopping a fiction
piece pretty aggressively, and have sent it out to a handful of magazines/journals.
That’s a big step for me, so I’m pretty excited/anxious to see how it goes.
Hearing back from editors can take anywhere from 1-6 months, though, and the
odds of being published are pretty slim, so I’m doing my best to forget about
it for now and just be surprised when the email comes or doesn’t come.
Still, the past four months have been some
of the most productive of my writing life for sure, and that feels good.
I’m reading a lot more too, and that goes
hand-in-hand with the writing. I re-read Call of the Wild (mostly on the
subway), and enjoyed a biography on Jack London (really interesting guy). I’m
still reading the Darktower books, but I’m taking my time with them (so I don’t
finish them), and am reading the Illiad (a great translation recommended by
Foose) and a book about writing biographies (something I might want to get in
to when I get home).
I also just started To Kill a Mockingbird
yesterday, which has always embarrassed me to have not read. It’s great. Funny
too. I think I’m reading it at precisely the right time though. Better raptly now
than apathetically as a 6th grader.
2. The work has been wearing on me.
I’m spoiled, I know. Teaching’s not easy
(to do well), but I know there are folks back home working 55+ hours a week doing
things a lot more strenuous. Hell, Jack London supposedly shoveled coal 14
hours a day for a stretch. Still, it’s got me about licked recently. I blame
working in public ed. back home mostly. In NC I had 10 sick days (used mostly
as weekend extenders), and 10 more optional personal days (I didn’t use those
on account of the $50 they dock your pay). On top of that, American holidays
are generous.
That’s not really the case when you’re
teaching in a private academy in Korea. The kids work like machines, and you’re
expected to follow suit. There aren’t any sick days (not really), the holidays
are few and far between, and you don’t have any optional vacation days. I’m not
telling you this to gripe. I knew (mostly) what I was signing up for, and the
pay is fair. I’m saving over half my (tax free) check to set me up for when I
make landfall back in the states. Gripes not-withstanding, though, 55 hours
non-stop does take a toll, especially on a bookish homebody.
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| Nothing breaks up the grind like field trip day, but what doesn't come through in this picture is the smell. |
We’ve been in a vacation-less stretch,
which, along with fatigue, has grounded us in Bundang most weekends. So for the
past couple of months it’s not been the adventure I dreamed of, but it’ll open
up. We’re planning to travel extensively after our contract is up in the summer,
and there are a couple three day weekends in the spring that we’re planning escapes
for.
And of course there’s Christmas, when we’ll
have off the 24th through the 3/4th (I think). My mom and
sister are coming over for that (which is huge). So there’s hope on the horizon
– it’s just been a busy stretch of grinding it out.
With the GRE (mostly) slain, grad schools implored, and some
of my creative goals met, I’m free to join a gym come next pay-day, and that’ll
do me well. In teaching, it’s easy to get home mentally tired, but physically
bored.
I’ve become very project driven. One project done, and on to
the next one. And that’s good. I’m getting stuff done.
Going back to school when I get home is really exciting. An
MA in English will put me in line for a PhD, which will let me teach lit. at a
university. I think sometimes about taking time off after the MA to teach at a
community college (if I can – and I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve for
securing a job in that field). If getting my MA convinces me that lit. isn’t
what I want to do (and if my writing goes anywhere), I’ve played with the idea
of getting a PhD in creative writing and teaching that.
I also enjoyed teaching high school, so that’s not an
unhappy backup. I could coach and the pay isn’t bad if you hold a graduate degree
in your field. I’d like to think I don’t need that much, materially speaking.
Most of my friends would call me low maintenance. My mom would say that kind of
thinking is myopic -- it’s easy to be low maintenance without a family, but
that’s another blog.
Mostly, I just want to get back in the classroom as a
student. Read some books. Write. Get smarter. That’s why I’ve always loved the
idea of teaching at a university – everyone there is trying to learn (or meet
girls). Everyone’s trying to better themselves. It’s infectious. Fulfilling. Maybe
that sounds naive, but it was my experience. That’s the real drive for going
back to school, and that makes me feel like it’s a good use of my time, or at
least an honest use of my time.
It’s already getting bitter cold in Korea. It’s a dry cold.
It was down in the twenties this past week. We made kimchi at the school with
the kids, and a lot of Koreans will make more with their families this weekend.
It’s a tradition that calls back to the days when people would bury a jar full
of the stuff (cabbage, fish oil, and spices) and dig it up for the lean times
in the winter. I love it.
So that’s the situation here. It’s cold. We’re working a
lot. I’m chewing through projects, and working at goals. It’s been a plod,
admittedly, but we’re looking forward to traveling – that’s what we came here
to do, after all.
I’ve still got the heat turned off in the apartment (I love bundling
up in the cold), and it reminds me a lot of my first year living off campus in
Milledgeville. What a happy slum that house was! Good memories of freezing my
butt off, huddling around the open stove in the kitchen with my roommates and
sleeping in my coat and boots. It’s not quite that cold, but seeing my breath
in my living room always takes me back to that winter.
Missing you all back home, and glad to have seen your snaps and
posts of Turkey Day. I’ll post more.
